


Every Night I Burn

by grimdarkfandango



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Body Swap (Good Omens), Character Study, Gen, Heaven, thoughts on God and Heaven too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21551800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimdarkfandango/pseuds/grimdarkfandango
Summary: Crowley expected Heaven to burn.
Comments: 34
Kudos: 107





	Every Night I Burn

**Author's Note:**

> I just have a lot of feelings about Crowley.  
> Title from Burn by The Cure.
> 
> _Every night I burn_  
>  Every night I fall again

Crowley expected Heaven to burn.

He knew what it was to step onto sacred ground, the too-hot rejection of consecrated soil trying to eject his very presence, remind him this place was not safe for him. There is no welcome there for his kind.

He keeps the surprise off his face - not his face, but Aziraphale's - as he treads the halls on high.

He'd rather expected Aziraphale's corporation, so soaked in heavenscent, to go up in a pillar of flames with his essence inside it on first contact. Instead it felt like wearing a too-big borrowed overcoat, soft and warm but only a temporary haven.

So he continues to walk, and he continues to not burst into flames.

He considers the angels before him, cold and sterile and vicious, as empty as the halls of Heaven around him. Nothing of churchground burn here. There is light aplenty but he feels nothing of Her.

Maybe that was the secret. Maybe She fell with the rest of them, took Herself out from the angels and the demons both and gave Herself whole to the earth, the humans She so loved.

Hell knew it was without Her. Had Heaven even noticed she'd left?

A column of hellfire summoned and ah, there's a heat more familiar. A different burn, a fever you can't sweat out, hot like relapse - just one more hit and you’ll be fine, you swear. A burn of absence, of lack, a nervous system on fire.

Crowley steps into the flames. He does not burn because there is nothing here that can burn him.

It takes belief to burn, belief to bless, belief to ascend.

All it takes to fall is the lack.

Crowley smiles as he falls back to the only place he can believe in, the only place he can feel Her and not just the space She could be.

To the world.


End file.
